Armacing

Does anyone else have a small suspicion (like I do) that they are saving the residential tower for last because they haven't yet decided whether it should be residential or office?

I think you might be too deep into the Nashville bubble. Nashville has not risen to the level of a ultra-dominant primate city like Atlanta/Seattle/Portland/Chicago/Boston, etc. The state's population is still relatively spread out between the 3 grand divisions and economic growth has continued to happen in all 3 regions. Nashville is getting a lot of media attention that the other parts of the state don't get, but I bet that will change soon. I think ultimately Tennessee will be more like Ohio and less like Georgia in the sense that we will have several good-sized cities rather than one dominant city that becomes the center of gravity. Personally, I think Memphis, Chattanooga, and Knoxville are primed for growth and I wish I had money to invest in real estate in those cities. But back to your good point about state incentives for recent relocations: True, those had state money. But in all cases the private company was making the investment and they were getting tax cuts or wage subsidies based on the number of good jobs they bring. There was some infrastructure building in those deals, but I would argue that building out city infrastructure is a normal function for city government, and everyone can use those streets. In contrast, the Titans are asking the government to make the capital investment for a highly-specialized asset that cannot be utilized by the general public. And the Titans are already here, so I don't think the state has yet in its history faced the "If you don't build it, we will leave" scenario like it will with the new stadium. To me it seems that arouses a different emotional response in the public than the typical "If you build it they will come" scenario. It raises the question "If Nashville is so special, why would they leave?" The troubling answer to that question is "Nashville is not special, the team is only here for the state subsidies" Of course, that line of questioning applies to all the scenarios you mentioned, but I think the threat to leave puts that question into starker contrast. At least when a business is moving here with subsidies, the question of whether they come for the city or the subsidies is open-ended... it could be either or both. One is a compliment and the other is an insult, so they balance out. But the threat to leave removes all doubt and I think that plays differently with the public, and therefore, with politicians.

No way that is going to happen, and Republican power has grown dramatically in TN since the bygone era when the Titan's stadium was built... And the cultural war between Davidson county and the surrounding counties has only intensified since then. No - I think it's fair to assume there would be staunch opposition to any state money going into a new stadium. Davidson county will have to go it alone. One person asked about Williamson - - HA! That really makes me laugh because Williamson county's whole brand is their ability to enjoy all the benefits of proximity to Davidson without any of the problems or taxes. It would be political suicide for anyone in Williamson government to voluntarily hitch their wagon to Nashville's financially questionable endeavors.

The prudent course of action would be to do reasonable renovations (less than what the Titans requested) and remain in the same stadium. If the Titans threaten to leave after that is offered then you really need to ask yourself why you are so loyal to a team that shows zero loyalty to their fans and their host city. Is it all about the money with them? Ok, fine - - two can play at that game! Nashvillians love their money too and they're not forking over one red cent to subsidize your privately-owned for-profit business! That should be the city's negotiating stance. If Nashville is not willing to call the Titan's bluff then the city has given up all negotiation leverage. But again, if the citizens of Nashville vote to spend $3B on a new stadium, I would love to see it happen. It will be hilarious when all the public employees are on strike because the city can't afford to give them a decent wage increase, because that $3B stadium will be thrown in the current Mayor's face 24/7.

Cities steal teams with new stadiums all the time, so I don't get how that's different from chip manufacturing. The sad truth is that publicly-funded stadiums are just subsidies for sports teams. All I'm saying is if we're going to subsidize a business, lets subsidize a high-tech business that creates high-paying jobs and diversifies our economy. We already have plenty of sports teams around here. If the titan's left tomorrow it wouldn't be a major problem for Nashville. We already have a ton of tourism-focused businesses. Most tourists never even set foot in the football stadium... their interests lie elsewhere.... And as we saw with tourism in general and conventions in particular during the pandemic, tourism is a non-essential industry that ebbs and flows with the economy. Computer chips, on the other hand, are pretty much the definition of essential industry.

What are the benefits to East and West Tennessee, exactly? I don't see any reason that legislators from those ends of the state would go along with that.

Yeah, any investment of $2B opens up a lot for a city. I wish we would spend $2B to build out a high-tech computer chip manufacturing campus and then invite someone like Intel or Samsung to come lease the facility and manage it. Just think about how much greater the economic impact to Nashville would be over the long run if we kick-start our entry into the high-tech manufacturing sector right when America is trying to diversify its chip sourcing away from Asia! And the jobs there would be plentiful and very high paying. I'm talking about engineers and well paid technicians, not somebody squirting mustard onto a hot dog or pouring beer into a plastic cup. If the city is in the business of making smart investments with government money, then it must be pointed just out how inferior an investment stadiums are compared to other possible investments of $2B.

You need to pitch that to someone in the movie industry! Alternative working titles: The Transpotainer, Deep Weekend, Maximum Overdraft, and It Runs Through A River.

Does this mean the building will be demolished, or just not leased by the state anymore?

I thought the whole point of the Metaverse is that it does not exist in real life. They should build out a massive corporate campus on the metaverse and have the back-story for that virtual property be that it used to be a scrap metal yard in the metaverse but they cleaned it up and revitalized that underutilized virtual real estate.

That's exactly why I dislike the seats. It's like, stop gaslighting us, bro! If your stadium is empty then own it.

There are plenty of negative things about Dubai, but I think Nashville could draw inspiration from Dubai in terms of being pro-growth and not being afraid to dream big and build tall. There is a lot of noise made about buildings needing to be "in context" in Nashville. I think most would agree that just about every building in Dubai is hella out of context, but that in-and-of-itself is the context of Dubai. The only way to change the "context" in Nashville is by allowing new buildings that are out of context. And the context needs to change, in my opinion. Nashville needs to change and grow up; both figuratively and literally.

That has to be a first! Has that ever happened before?

This is awesome! We need to crowd-fund a new "grass roots" movement in Seattle to bring back the employee tax idea there and drive Amazon to move more employees to Nashville!

That may all be true, but that doesn't change one simple fact: The taller the better!

Wow, so your telephoto lens captured the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox church in the background, which is located on Franklin road, and the hills behind that are Oak Hill neighborhoods/Radnor Lake hills. That's some compaction of about 6 to 7 miles of distance (as the crow flies) into a single scene!

What part of town is in the back ground of this shot? If you look right above the nose cone of the jet it almost looks like there is some kind of orthodox church, and then a hillside rising above that. I can't figure out which direction you are looking here...

Seriously, what's up with all the wierd names starting with "F"? I hereby nominate the name "The Fudge Pop" as a good and suitable name for this tower! Edit: Actually, just the name "Fudgicle" is even better!

To me it's obvious the solution in Nashville is water-based transportation. Look at what they have been doing with commuter ferries in Lagos, Nigeria. We need small commuter ferries and water taxies on the rivers, lakes, and navigable creeks around Nashville, as well as dredging in places to expand the range of said ferries. To connect Percy Priest Lake with the Stones river downstream of the dam we need a bi-cable gondola lift with ferry stations at either end. Percy Priest ferries should extend all the way to Smyrna and "North Murfreesboro" via a deepened channel in the Stones River. Maybe even all the way into downtown Murfreesboro via the Stones River with the right water flow system and changing boats a couple times. Old Hickory Lake ferries should extend all the way to Gallatin, and service Hendersonville and Hermitage. I'm not sure if the ferries would use the lock at Old Hickory or if another bi-cable gondola lift would be more efficient. On the Cumberland river, ferries would service Goodlettsville/RiverGate, Stones River/Percy Priest connection, Madison, Opry Mills, Downtown (WeGo rail station docks), Oracle/River North, Metro Center, TSU, The Nations, Ashland City, and Clarksville. Building out the navigable waterways and gondolas will be cheaper and faster than acquiring rights-of-way on land and building bridges and tunnels. There would be less disruption during construction, and docks are cheaper than transit stations. There are plenty of vacant plots along the waterways for building docks. And the best part of all is that the system could accommodate multiple companies all competing to provide service. Some boats would target price competitiveness, others would target luxury and be floating limousines. This could also encourage development along the riverfront in multiple places. The only downside to such a system is that there is no obvious way to connect the airport to the system. Possibly a connection to Percy Priest in some capacity?

It will work if they choose the right species. Poison Ivy seems to grow well here with minimal maintenance.

Of course there are government apologists aplenty these days, but it doesn't take a degree in economics to realize the government is under-stating inflation. They fail to differentiate between the price of compulsory purchases like food/shelter/medical care and discretionary purchases like smart phones, etc. They look at a basket of goods rather than the absolute minimum things a person needs to survive, so the methodology itself is deceptive. But we need not even trouble ourselves with the trivial details of how CPI is calculated. All we need to do is know that the Fed targets 2% inflation but the interest rate is set at 0.25%... meaning the average person with a bank account looses about 2% of their purchasing power annually (compounding) by design. Literally robbing savers to pump money/credit back into the inflationary bubble. When you know the game is rigged and the house has stacked the deck against you, then it's time to cash out your fiat for physical gold and go home. Last one left holding the monopoly money is a rotten egg!

ETF is a rip off because you can't take physical possession. Everything you say about physical possession is wrong. Physical possession is the key to everything. If physical possession is meaningless why did the Fed have to confiscate gold in 1933? If physical possession is meaningless why did Germany request all their gold be sent back to Germany in the mid 2000's? I don't have to worry about getting robbed any more if I have gold than if I don't. Gold must always be hidden in such a way that common robbers or even government investigators cannot find it. If you think hidden gold is easy to find then you clearly haven't been paying attention to all the hidden gold around the world and even it this country that people are still looking for. If society disintegrates it's true that you'll need guns, ammo, food, and water. But once society is restored, it's also nice to have a store of wealth to re-start your life with, and that's where gold comes in. Gold never loses its value. If someone is just buying and selling gold coins at a coin shop or pawn shop it's true they will lose money, but that's not why or how smart people handle gold. You buy the gold and never sell it for dollars. Now, you may at some point in the future trade it for physical assets like land, guns, ammo, or maybe even vehicles, perhaps buying your way onto a boat or across an international border. But trading gold for fiat currency is just about the dumbest thing a person can do. As for the current and recent valuation of gold: It's the bargain of the century. When it becomes obvious that gold is way more valuable than what the metals exchanges are pegging the price at, then it will be too late and you won't be able to buy gold at any price. I say load up now while you still can. During March of 2020 when the pandemic was hitting and the stock market was crashing, it was literally impossible to buy gold. I checked the online gold sellers and they were all sold out... as in no gold for sale. What do you call the price when nobody is willing to sell it to you for any price? Infinite? Not really. Actually, nobody was willing to sell at the posted market price because the market price wasn't reflecting reality at that time. In the consumer market, the price must have spiked well above $2,000 to actually convince someone to part with their gold while staring into a novel pandemic of unknown consequences. And that's really my point in all of this. During a true crisis, the price of physical gold in the consumer market will surge while the stock market tanks. I call that a great hedge. It won't even matter what the published price is on the London Metals Exchange - and that's assuming we even have access to the internet to know that price (a big assumption).

***Continuing this discussion about economics from the "Economics" thread as apparently we are only allowed to discuss non-political aspects of economics in that thread... or more precisely: non-controversial political aspects of economics.*** Yes, Mr_Bond, you are absolutely correct. The fact that only people with good credit can take advantage of the credit-expansion policies of the Fed is just one of the many ways the system is rigged to keep poor people poor and rich people rich. The monetary inflation policies of the Fed are another example because wages don't keep up with rising retail costs and debt-financed asset appreciation - thus resulting in a decrease in the standard of living and a destruction of wealth for those with cash savings. Some people might say "Those poor people should be investing in stocks!", but stocks come with risk. Some people on limited/fixed income cannot afford to take any risks with their money. Yet those are exactly the people that the government is robbing with the greatest counterfeiting operation on the face of the planet: The Federal Reserve Bank. The economic manipulation inflicted upon Americans is a high crime and the Fed Board should be tried with treason, but they won't be because the un-educated masses have been brain-washed to believe it's the central banks job to de-value the currency. The plight of the ignorant and deluded masses is made worse by the fact that their genocidal government was successful in it's efforts to marginalize the concept of gold and silver as money. Owning gold and silver is portrayed as crazy or stupid by so many media outlets and the investment community. Few Americans are aware of the fact that the government confiscated the gold of americans in 1933 by force based on an executive order from the president. This was done to remove the last safe-haven store of wealth that was available to average Americans and cement the economic control of the Socialist/Fascist alliance between big government and big business. Although Americans are free to own metals today, most do not because this knowledge was lost during the generation while it was illegal, and many public institutions choose not to publicize it or even actively denounce it as a "bad idea". It is interesting to note, however, that using physical gold & silver as a hedge against inflation is common in other countries. There was an article about people buying gold in Istanbul because of the Turkish currency crisis just a few days ago. If the public in the US knew about the true rate of inflation, maybe they would discover what everyone else around the world seems to know and buy more gold for saving. You should check out the real rate of inflation.

We need a lot more people around here because people rock! Most of the things you are complaining about like high prices and lower standard of living are caused by the government, not regular people who are just trying to live their lives as best they can.

Agreed, that is always the fear here. You may already know this, but we in Nashville experienced a similar situation (not as long in duration) where the current location of Broadwest was a water-filled hole for years after the old West End Summit development failed. Even today Google maps shows that location as a "lake" in the default view map.